


an iceberg, reaching out

by Ahavaa



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25233727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahavaa/pseuds/Ahavaa
Summary: *coughs* timey-wimey bullshit aside,  and also ignoring the doyleist explanations for the season 5 ep, Eobard Thawne in season 1 must know that all his plans Are Fucked.  It is catastrophically, critically, Done by the time he gets not one buttwovisits from the Unhappy Future, but at least he will hook himself under Barry Allen's skin forever, which -- because he is a serial killer -- is basically still Winning Foreverlook I'm working my way up to the porn, these characters in a TV show about mansharks gotta be Dramatic and Pretentious first
Relationships: Barry Allen/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells
Comments: 20
Kudos: 25





	an iceberg, reaching out

Here we are, again, in the broken past: 

He didn't expect the joy. The boy is _joyful_ , easily delighted. He loves Cisco's energy bars and Caitlin's dry wit. He _loves_. Fiercely and wildly and carelessly, like it's nothing, like he's unbruised and wild and young and free, even when Eobard's fingerprints have already begun to settle into his skin. 

It sets Eobard's teeth on edge, this shocking, vulnerable boy, wide open, walking whistling into the trap. I will destroy you, he thinks: put up your fists. I am the stranger who watched you unconscious, helpless, for nine months, you should distrust me, you should _know_. How dare you trust me. 

The boy has a runner's body, lean, cut down to essential muscle, the body is correct, the body he made is _right_ , so how is it possible that the soul is so new, fresh, untouched? Green and smelling of ivy, is Barry Allen, wild and young and growing desperately, riotously. Naked emotion always plain on his face. So full of innocent love that Eobard sometimes can't stand to look at him, hopelessly unmarked by the future. All the pieces of him that will be worn away, all those pieces that are dull or blank at home, in the familiar future, these pieces _shine_ here, in the past. This child is uncalloused and savagely alive, hungry, delighted. Eobard hates him for it. 

Barry brought him - will bring him - his daughter. His _daughter_. 

An unknown creature, an extraordinary impossibility of time travel, who will only ever be real to a dozen people, at most, the poor creature, because he knows the timeline, and Allen had brought her to _him_. Allowed _him_ to see this aberration, lovely in her own right, and he knows that she's doomed, must be doomed, but what a gift, what a _gift_ \--call it rage, call it dire necessity, but nonetheless Barry Allen has given him one of the secrets of his heart. It's clever -- only a handful of people can remember this child, this forgotten slip in the timestream, but Barry brought her to _him_ , like a fool, and he can't think past the roar in his head -- 

There had been grief and fear in Allen's eyes and his muscles had clenched, ready to move, shockingly beautiful in his hate, vicious, like an effigy in marble, and Eobard had wallowed in the richness of his horror. Barry is the cancer in him, the thing he's always sick for. As he's discovered, to his sorrow: once you've made something, you're caught in it. Will it or no, of course there will be blood, but there's no escaping the -- he's finally, finally bound them together. 

Barry was wholly his creation, and it was impossible not to feel possessive, to crave it -- always good, years later, that man, hating him, it left him aching, it left him desperate. Incautious. Incapable of caution. 

Allen -- Barry -- had always been his to pluck. In the early days, and weren't they living in the early days now? 

"Oh! -- Dr Wells. I didn't know you were -- here," Barry said. There was the faintest sheen of sweat at his hairline, his breath came just a bit faster than normal. Eobard looked up at him, glowing, beautiful in the flat fluorescent light of the hallway. This boy has allowed him access to every raw fact about him-- blood, DNA, heart and kidneys. It was stupid. It was _foolish_ , he longed to tell the boy how foolish he was while craving the data. He could tell how Barry Allen's heart beat at any moment of any day by accessing an _app_. It was obscene, the way they peeled him apart, pared him down, in this time. 

"I couldn't sleep," he said, calmly. 

(What would be the cruelest way to seduce this boy? The kindest? Barry Allen from the future had hated him so precisely, so totally: does that mean he will be cruel or kind? Which would spark that hot look, the wildfire of hate, in the deadly, doomed future?) 

A stupid question: Barry Allen has always matched weakness to weakness. 

"You did well, today;" he says. 

"Could be better," Barry says, blushing, already running hot: "Dr Wells. You make me better, out there, and I don't -" 

He could ignore that lie. Obfuscate. He could be clever, but _Barry Allen_ had brought _his_ daughter to _Eobard Thawne _, thrumming with hatred, and. And.__

____

____

He was going to lose, so why did he feel like a god _now_?

"You did what had to be done," he says, here, in the present, bloodier than before, "no one could ask for more, Mr. Allen."'

Prettier than a picture, all avenues of escape lost. You ate fruit when it was ripe, after all, and this boy, his shining green eyes, his lovely body, fresh and new and begging to be destroyed: well. He was ripe. 

"I can be better," Barry insists, low, a little uneven. 

It would be pure joy to stand, on his two strong legs, and lift the boy's downturned face, tell him that his destiny is shining, that he will take every monstrous blow without breaking, that never once will Eobard see him falter or refuse the bit. He doesn't do that. 

What he does is worse, and sweeter.

**Author's Note:**

> eobard thawne: okay so you're telling me that I lose but you never stop thinking about me and: in the future, mentioning my name makes you spontaneously vibrate into six dimensions in raw uncontrollable fury? oh man. all the reasons I wasn't hitting it are GOOOONE 
> 
> barry west-allen: look I know You Are How You Are but Please Don't 
> 
> eobard thawne: lol sure. goodbye twink. tiny daughter of twink


End file.
